Last week I had the opportunity to present a webinar at the Project Management Viewblog. I spoke on how Six Sigma-powered problem statements can actually improve innovation in a project. Interestingly, that’s contrary to what many product managers believe. (You can review a full audio-video playback of the webinar presentation by clicking here.) Read the rest of this entry »
When companies consider the merits of Six Sigma or consider embarking on a Lean Six Sigma effort, concerns and questions always arise. Many companies have heard of Six Sigma, but most have no idea what it actually is or how it works. Here’s a helpful list of the basic questions companies get wrong most frequently.
Q: Lean Six Sigma only fits large companies, right?
A: Not at all. Companies as large as GE have saved billions using Six Sigma. But small companies have actually proven to achieve similar results more quickly than larger companies. Lean Six Sigma is a key component of improvement for any size business.
Newcomers to Six Sigma often struggle to pre-emptively recognize improvement projects that are ill-formed and bound to languish. This ability to spot problem projects develops with time and experience. But after seeing and reviewing thousands of projects, I have found that there are some key indicators—some telltale clues—that allow even inexperienced reviewers to know it’s time to stop and take a closer look at a project’s viability. Read the rest of this entry »
Over the last few months, I have been helping an international holding company assess the operations of their portfolio of companies. They want to know things like, “How Lean are the operations at each company?” “How far along is each company in its Six Sigma improvement journey?” And, “What are the common opportunties and strengths we can build upon?” I’ve visited company sites, reviewed operation activities, collected data, and interviewed executives and staff. I have found that, in many ways, the foundation for excellence in operations can be boiled down to a single, simple question: “How do you define quality?” Read the rest of this entry »
Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) was an Italian economist who proposed that 80 percent of an economy’s wealth is held by 20 percent of its population. Since Pareto proposed his famous principle, it has been confirmed that this 80-20 rule of thumb also applies to many other phenomena, including the distribution of product/process quality. For example, it has been found that 80 percent of the observed defects on a product or in a process can be attributed to 20 percent of the possible causes.
The Pareto Principle is a principle because, by definition, it holds true across a broad range of situations and applications. The Pareto Principle describes the behavior of much more than just the usual distribution of product or manufacturing defects. Here are some other areas—from both business and life—where I’ve found the Pareto Principle provides the key to understanding and improvement: Read the rest of this entry »
Bill Kappele, technical director and instructor at consulting company Objective DOE, does a great job of teaching individuals and organizations how to use experiments to reach a powerful level of improvement knowledge. He’s compiled a list of 10 statistical concepts that every engineer should know.
Bill’s list is excellent. In fact, I believe his 10 key concepts should be known by everyone tasked with making process or system improvements. But because Bill’s audience is primarily engineers, the language he’s used may be hard for some to get through. Here’s how I would tweak Bill’s list to extend it’s value to a larger audience: Read the rest of this entry »
Fox News ran a story today that shines further light on the problem of healthcare quality: Medicine Mix-Ups Harm Hospitalized Kids. This is just more data characterizing the magnitude of problems in today’s healthcare (see earlier post: Hospital Errors and Accountability - The Beginning of a Six Sigma Journey?)
It is amazing to me to see healthcare struggling with such basic issues. Here’s a telling excerpt from the Fox News story:
“Researchers found a rate of 11 drug-related harmful events for every 100 hospitalized children. That compares with an earlier estimate of two per 100 hospitalized children, based on traditional detection methods. The rate reflects the fact that some children experienced more than one drug treatment mistake.
“The new estimate translates to 7.3 percent of hospitalized children, or about 540,000 kids each year, a calculation based on government data.
“Simply relying on hospital staffers to report such problems had found less than 4 percent of the problems detected in the new study.”
Wow! Just from the numbers perspective, healthcare-caused mistakes are near the very top of the Pareto diagram of things negatively impacting society. There’s no question that healthcare needs drastic improvement. The question is how and where.
W. Edwards Deming asserted that in every system quality is the result of the collective procedures, policies, and systems of the organization. Deming’s assertion directly opposes the notion that quality originates from the built-up good/bad efforts of individuals. Decades of time and countless examples from the world over have cemented the truth of Deming’s principle, so much so that anyone in today’s world wishing to argue against Deming might as well kid themselves that they can compete in the global economy using rocks and sticks.
Since quality is the result of the collective procedures, policies, and systems of an organization, the lasting solution to quality can reside in only one place—with those that plan, implement and manage the system! In other words, better doctors, nurses, and patients will not solve these problems in healthcare. A solution can only be achieved by those managing today’s healthcare—hospital administrators, insurers, politicians, etc. (Ironically, it is those same decision-makers that are the root cause of the problems experienced today. Take, for example, the unintended problems caused by the choices of Massachusetts’s healthcare managers, as reported by the New York Times: In Massachusetts, Universal Coverage Strains Care )
For nearly a decade, data has shown that almost 100,000 deaths occur each year due to preventable hospital errors. Accounts of botched medical services pepper news outlets. Even celebrities are reporting ill effects: Dennis Quaid, Glenn Beck.
Today, CBS News reported on what some hospitals and some state and federal government organizations are doing to begin to address the problem.
At least, in some quarters, healthcare providers are hopefully starting to approach the very basics.
iSixSigma performs an annual global survey of those working in the field of Six Sigma. The data is always interesting and always relevant. To review a webcast presentation of this year’s survey, follow this link.
For me it is always interesting to explore the differences (and sometimes similarities) between industries, global regions, Six Sigma role/function, and education background.
Proportions pop up everywhere in life — “Four out of five dentists recommend…”, “Obama leads Clinton by ten percentage points among likely voters in Wisconsin…”, “Last month’s manufacturing yields are up from a year ago…”, and so on. Anytime you calculate the fraction, portion, or percentage something takes up from the whole, that’s a proportion. And Six Sigma provides a method for you to discover if one proportion is truly different from another. Read the rest of this entry »
